April

Adelaide was tired and crying, and we put her in her crib for a nap. Her immediate response was to stop crying, start giggling, and then to roll around with her blanket wrapped around her--immersing herself in comfiness. She just loves blankets that much. Adelaide loves pillows just as much as blankets and will even carry one around with her to either fall on or just occasionally squeeze. Euphrates has no exceptional affinity for pillows beyond what normal people have, but she does love blankets. She always has to be wearing one—not like a cool cape because she wants to be a super hero, and not dragged along behind her like a comfort object for a baby, but more securely wrapped around her like she is a permanently cold old lady with a potential thyroid problem who really should just go buy herself a Snuggie. At least Euphie hasn’t picked up the wearing gloves while she types habit, too.

Adelaide is one of those one year olds that still puts everything in their mouths. Euphie was never like that. Euphie was also never one to engage in one of Adelaide’s most enjoyed activities of digging in trash cans. There’s just a feeling unlike any other when you see your little put-anything-in-her-mouth baby digging in the garbage. Well, hmm, maybe it’s similar to the feeling you get when they put your dirty underwear on their heads and run around.

Euphie loves cars. She loves seeing real cars and being in cars and playing car video games and watching the movie Cars. A trip to the store has Euphie staring out the windows of our car and is filled with excited screams of, “Car! Car, car, car!” Her happiness can almost bring her to tears. I wanted to get her the Handy Manny Transforming Fix-It Truck toy way back when for Christmas until I was barraged from four different people jokingly saying I’m just cornering her into a stereotype. Seriously? Four people have to make that joke? Anyway, her love of cars makes going out a real treat for her. Unless that anywhere is Reams and there aren’t any car carts where there usually are because if there aren’t any car carts…well…it is not a treat for anyone.

A pretty long time ago, Euphie discovered the wonders of butter. Not the taste, just the...texture? color? I don’t really know. But I caught her painting the walls of her closet with it. Being a neat freak baby that doesn’t like to touch anything, this painting was done very carefully with a couple of spatulas. After this, I kept a close eye on the butter. Under Euphie’s grandparents’ eyes, such a close watch on the butter was not always kept, and I soon found myself scraping globs of butter off the carpet after a more Pollock style painting in the dining room. Her fun with butter was still being held back, however, as she could still not bring herself to touch it. This is where I’m actually impressed with the jump her brain made to allow her play. The one thing she can stand getting on her hands is soap and shampoo as they enhance one’s cleanliness despite being temporarily messy. That is why she shampooed her hair with butter a couple months back. And that’s why shampooed her hair with butter three additional times this month.

My girls are fairly open to food. The only things Adelaide ever has put in her mouth and not liked to the point of spitting back out (including the garbage) are eggs. Euphie is quite picky—but she changes what she is picky about from day to day. She has never consistently hated anything (except inedibles like garbage—the only garbage she has ever eaten, in fact, is egg shells) but she’ll also turn down a cookie if there is even a chance she can score a green olive.

The alarm clock has been going off on Saturday mornings when it is not supposed to. I usually figure it goes off half due to me turning it on by habit and half due to Euphie or Addie turning it on for me without me noticing. A couple Saturdays ago, however, I couldn’t sleep and I was up at three in the morning just staring at the clock when the alarm went off. Since I was wide awake and my eyes were open and already adjusted to the dark I was able to discover two things. The time wasn’t set to go off until 6:12 as usual and not the three o’clock time it was and the alarm clock button was also not even on. With the vast knowledge I have of ghosts from watching the psychic Sylvia when she is on Montel (my holy trinity of potential belief in stuff consists of Sylvia while on Montel, Ghost Hunters on the Sci Fi channel because some of those shadows are pretty epic, and some reality show psychic competition that I watched three episodes of a marathon of before I had to go and have ever since regretted not finding out who won or remembering what the show was called) I know that ghosts often use electronics to communicate. So there you go, we have a ghost.

Update: the show is called America’s Psychic Challenge and it is AWESOME.

Euphie was running around in circles screaming because there was a fly flying around. I would have killed it, but Euphie wouldn’t give me the fly swatter since it is her favorite thing to hit Adelaide with.



Babies love putting things in other things. Some of my cousins once put bread in a subwoofer. We’ve got batteries in VCRs, absolutely anything can fit into a toilet, and many of Euphie’s toys have gotten a good dishwashing. That’s why Easter Egg hunts are so great for babies. Regardless, Euphie loves to work with CDs and DVDs because they’re so thin she can squeeze them into all sorts of things that other things can’t squeeze into. Now I’m not one to let pictures do the talking for me, but this is just too…I don’t even know and that’s why I’m not going to bother trying.

But yes, that is Monster Squad slid into Adelaide’s diaper.